Our preschoolers have been spending the last few weeks learning all about Chinese New Year and its traditions!

Our Willows class was very curious about the Chinese Zodiac so we spent some time looking up which zodiac animal year we were born in. Most of us were born in the year of the Dragon, Snake and Horse! To celebrate this year, the year of the Dog, we all made our own paper bag puppets! Some of our Willows even practiced writing numbers in Chinese!

Lion dancing is also an important part of the celebration for Chinese New Year (done for good luck and to drive away evil spirits) - we loved watching videos of Lion Dancers! We were lucky enough to have a parent arrange for a volunteer from the Jing Wo Cultural Association Lion Dance Team to come talk to our preschoolers about Lion Dancing and the meaning behind it. He brought in instruments for us to try out and we even had a chance to try on the Lion costume! It was so much fun!